Humanity: The Best Producer of Mutants

*Please note that this article is an opinion-editorial.

Though I am nowhere close to being considered an expert when it comes to Marvel’s mutant-related comics, I am an X-Men fan and have read many of the titles concerning the band of mutated individuals. Throughout all of the titles I’ve read, there is a very common aspect of “Bad Mutants” (such as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and some variations of the Hellfire Club) which have gone to great lengths to try and wipe out humanity in the hopes of creating a mutant-only paradise on Earth. Not only is this action seemingly morally wrong, but it is rather antithetical to the actual long-term existence of mutantkind. Without humanity, mutants would not exist, and to extinguish them would be to cut off the greatest producer of mutants ever known to history.

MINOR COMIC HISTORICAL SPOILERS BELOW

Throughout the mutant-related titles, the X-Men, New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Force, and other X-teams spinning out of the original title and group have fought to protect mutantkind and humanity, believing in Charles Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence between the two species. This has normally been referred to as just simple cohabitation, preferring to live in peace rather than what many seem to be the eventual confrontation between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens superior. But, there’s a more practical reason behind why the “God Mutants” continue to defend humanity, though from what I’ve seen, no one knows or at least doesn’t acknowledge it. In many ways, humanity is the savior, precursor, and producer for mutantkind; without humanity, mutants would not exist.

If one looks at the vast array of mutants, both present and past, and look at their known blood relations, it is quite clear that humanity is responsible for literally giving birth to much of mutantkind. With very few exceptions (to name a few examples: Magneto being the father of the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Polaris; Mystique being the mother of Nightcrawler; Cyclops and Jean Grey being the alternative timeline parents of Rachel Grey, Cable, and X-Man), most of the mutants that have been identified have had human parents, their mutant abilities triggering during the time of puberty. So, if people such as Sebastian Shaw or Magneto ever got their way and exterminated humanity, just what would become of muntantkind’s long-term prospects? Probably nothing good at all, which is a technical term I’m sure.

What really catches my attention about this is that I haven’t seen any of the characters within the mutant-related titles to realize this. People like Magneto, Sebastian Shaw, Apocalypse, and even Mr. Sinister all had human relatives that they were close to at one point in their lives; some even underwent severe emotional trauma that caused them to see their relatives as an even closer, more important part of who they are. I realize that it is somewhat a “human” trait to see oneself and their loved ones as different from the rest of humanity, but I still haven’t seen much in the way of Magneto, Shaw, and the others having any real preference for their human relatives over the rest of humanity in general. It especially baffles me when Apocalypse is taken into consideration; his role is supposed to be to help the evolution of muntantkind through extreme measures, but one would think he’d be able to see just how important humans are to the continual growth and prosperity of muntants simply by how they exist.

Even now, exactly 50 years later from when they first hit the stage in September of 1963, this seemingly obvious, yet unexplored, factoid continues to persist in story plots. Will they ever see just how important humanity is to their world, or will they keep fighting amongst themselves for how to live in a world they were born into while a severe amount of the population hates them? Considering it sells comics, I’m going to go with the latter, but I hope that they eventually see things for what they are.